Since I was late publishing this week, I give you 2 posts:
For this tale cast you mind back to the Jon Pertwee era Doctor Who. This could be an apocryphal tale, I don't know, but it amused me so I'll share it. They needed a costume for the new Doctor, and part of this outfit was to be a scarf. Unsurprisingly this department of the BBC had a tame little old lady who whenever they needed something special knitting they went to her. On this occasion a junior runner was sent to get some wool, and take it to the old lady for her to make a scarf with. He then went out and bought a selection of wool and took it to this lady and basically passed on the message "This is the wool to make the scarf with". A week later he went back to find she had used all the wool to make it. Without time to make a new one they went with it and the arguably the most memorable part of the most popular Doctor was born.
Let's assume this tale is true. Let's assume that they somehow had to work in this slightly batty bit of costume to the episode/character. We see evidence of this, right at the start of Robot we have the Doctor trying a range of wacky costumes including a Genghis Khan type affair, finally he comes out in the outfit we know and love and the Brigadier settles on this as good enough. Would this scene have existed if not for the miscommunication?
Without this battyness, would the Tom Baker Doctor have been as batty? Probably (this being Tom Baker) but possibly not. If not then without Tom Baker being batty would later Doctors have been? What we now have as the staple of Doctor Who could so easily not have been.
Just a thought anyway...
Wednesday 26 November 2008
Monday 24 November 2008
Pre Budget announcement
Here
Somewhat annoyed by this for a number of reasons, however the one that needs shouting about the most is:
"And he said he was increasing duties on alcohol, tobacco and petrol so they would remain at the price they are now."
Fair enough except:
Somewhat annoyed by this for a number of reasons, however the one that needs shouting about the most is:
"And he said he was increasing duties on alcohol, tobacco and petrol so they would remain at the price they are now."
Fair enough except:
- I don't recall him cutting taxes to keep the prices stable (can someone correct my memory)
- Wouldn't the government's costs go down as the price of a barrel falls? Therefore their need for revenue would go down too.
- This gives the feeling that the government seems to feel that the tax payers are a resource to get the maximum amount of revenue out of possible, not that they the government should place the minimum burden possible. They seem to think that the population should support the government not that the government is there to serve the population
- Regardless of all of the above, will this duty ever be removed or is this increase, unlike the VAT decrease here for good?
Mission Statement
It looks like I'll never get the site to the state that I want it to, not without spending more effort and money than I'm prepared to at the moment so the site will have to do as it is for now. I always preferred keeping things simple and as close to default settings as possible anyway.
So a mission statement for this blog:
So a mission statement for this blog:
- I'll try and update it at least weekly on a Monday. If I miss it's because my phone is having issues. If I know I'll be out of touch I'll post one in advance.
- This blog is not about doing cutting edge news or tracking latest trends or keeping you up to date with hot stuff. There are lots of others who can do that far better. I know this means I won't score highly on search engines, but primarily this blog is for me to record thoughts, not for me to enhance my ego by having a large hit count.
- Mostly the blog should consist of my larger philosophies and long term reviews. Lots of people will give you a review of a mobile phone that has just been released. FHowever in my case I'll give you a review of the mobile phone I've been using for the last 6/12 months - admittedly this may not be very useful from a buying perspective as I'll probably be a generation out of date, but it might give you ideas of things to look for in the new model.
- I'll try not to edit posts, but where I do I'll mark them as such (excepting spelling/grammar errors).
- I'll review and rant and rave about just about anything that interests me or incites a passion. There's already posts on subjects from motorbike to mobile phone reviews, from game strategy to conversation techniques; I plan to keep it wide and varied, random and unpredictable.
- The blog is PG. Although many things cause me passion that are not of a PG nature the actual words themselves and the topics covered will stay safe for my nephew to read. Unless of course I explicitly mark the post otherwise...
- I don't promise to be interesting, just honest and forthright.
F1 News
So I've never really talked about my love of Formula 1 on here, but I do, so when I heard the news of the BBC's plans for next year then I have to say this is good news.
Eddie Jordan was always a hoot as a team boss, so I look forward to his commentary, and Coulthard should have some great gossip considering he is staying on as a test driver for Red Bull. Let's hope he keeps un-biased though.
They're keeping Brundle which I'm glad of. He always had an interesting spin on things, and some continuity would be good. Unfortunatly they don't seem to have Louise Goodman - This I think is a shame I always liked her pit side covereage and thought she did manage to get a side to things everyone else missed. Although i was always convinced there was something between her and Coulthard, maybe that was my dirty mind...
Other than that I reserve judgement about this Jake Humphrey person. I hear he has done a reasonable job on football and the Olympics, so let's look forward to some fresh blood and the perspective that brings. However he doesn't seem to have any experience of motorsport but from the sounds of it he's a quick learner so fingers crossed.
Should be a very intersting year next year, maybe it's time for a rant about aero packaged and KERS... Just don't get me started on Berie's barmy gold medal system idea...
Eddie Jordan was always a hoot as a team boss, so I look forward to his commentary, and Coulthard should have some great gossip considering he is staying on as a test driver for Red Bull. Let's hope he keeps un-biased though.
They're keeping Brundle which I'm glad of. He always had an interesting spin on things, and some continuity would be good. Unfortunatly they don't seem to have Louise Goodman - This I think is a shame I always liked her pit side covereage and thought she did manage to get a side to things everyone else missed. Although i was always convinced there was something between her and Coulthard, maybe that was my dirty mind...
Other than that I reserve judgement about this Jake Humphrey person. I hear he has done a reasonable job on football and the Olympics, so let's look forward to some fresh blood and the perspective that brings. However he doesn't seem to have any experience of motorsport but from the sounds of it he's a quick learner so fingers crossed.
Should be a very intersting year next year, maybe it's time for a rant about aero packaged and KERS... Just don't get me started on Berie's barmy gold medal system idea...
Tuesday 18 November 2008
Civilisation Revolutions
I've had a lot of difficulty writing this review for a simple reason; I don't know how to pitch it. Let me explain:
When I first started writing this blog I made the decision that yes it would be a bit random, and certainly not cutting edge, but the audience had to be wide; particularly for computer games it had to appeal to people like myself (Who have been playing computer games all be it intermittently almost all their lives - since the BBC back in 1982 when I was 4), to my partner (who frequently expresses how much she hates computer games and is on a mission to discourage me from playing them), right through to my flatmate (who works for a games company).
So a review of civilisation is tricky as if my memory serves me correctly I had a copy of back in the days of the Atari ST, if not then we certainly had it on at least one of our Amigas. This is a game therefore that spans nearly 2/3rds of my life and yet the question still needs answering why am I still so addicted to it? Why do i still find myself going on there with the intention of playing it for half an hour or so and still be there at 3am unable to leave the computer?
From that you can guess that the new version is just as addictive as the earlier versions and in my eyes the remake has lived up to the old ones in terms of playability. More importantly for me it is very playable on the XBOX and also (my flatmate informs me) on the DS.
So if you are familiar with Civ, then you can stop reading here, yes it is as addictive as the earlier versions, yes the interface does work on a console, yes that sim speak the avatars use is bloody annoying, but you can turn the volume off for that at least, and no it doesn't really add much to the previous versions of Civ except possibly a balancing of all the modes of combat and some pretty animations if that's your thing. If you enjoyed civ in the past and want a solution for your surrent games platform of choice then civilisation revolutions should leave you at the very least sleepless, even if you disagree with some of the fine tuning changes they've made.
For newcomers then, what is Civ?
Well a turn based strategy game where the aim is to become the dominant civilisation on your map. This can be achieved in a number of ways:
Military
Simply wipe out enough of your competitors that everyone else is crushed beneath your mighty war machine. IME this is one of the easiest ways to win the game, and often the most fun, still where's the challenge in easy.
Culture:
An interesting concept introduced in the new game (to me) is culture. Each city produces culture and you can do things like build temples and cathedrals and wonders (such as the hollywood wonder) to enhance your culture. If you are cultured enough neighbouring cities will want to join your culture. This is an interesting feature of the game as on my first time playing as a military domination I lost 3 of my major cities to my neighbour because i was pouring all my resources into building fighting units and the citizens of my industrial cities thought "bugger this, we'll join an interesting civilisation" and left me. Sure I swiftly concoured them back again, but that was enough of an experience to mean that the next game I played to win a culture victory which added a very interesting spin to the game with a significantly different set of objectives. i.e. every other method of winning requires a large number of cities, with culture you can win with a powerbase of just 3 cities (provided you supe them up enough)
Economic
Easy, get the most money, build the world bank, control the world. (You think that's your sword you're waving at me? You still owe me money for that :-)
Scientific
As part of civilisation you research new technologies, get to the stage of building a spaceship the soonest, and get it to Alpha Centuri before your capital is taken, then you win the game.
So lots of strategy, a multitude of tactics. Certainly not hot paced blowing aliens up stuff, but IMO far more entertaining. (BTW don't get me wrong, i still love those types of games, just see my gears of war review, it's just a case of different things for different moods).
So what else? If you're not convinced by now you never will be, so I thought I'd share some of my tactics I use while playing the game, I'm not saying these are perfect, but it may save you some time in figuring these out for yourself:
At the start of the game, siting your first city asap is vital, unless you start at a totally rubbish place, I would accept the square you land on just so that you can get producing things as soon as possible.
Attack those barbarians - they're always an easy kill.
Send your first military unit out exploring, use your second or 3rd to guard the city.
Once you have a couple of militia exploring and a guard on your first city, found a second and third city asap.
From this point on always make sure you have at least one guard unit in each city. Later in the game you'll need more then one. Three units of the same kind can be combined into an army. An army can normally defend itself against an attack by any unit of the same technology level. If you need to withstand a determined attack, (multiple units) or attack from a more advanced foe, invest in city walls. These sort of things though you don't need to worry about until later in the game.
Look very carefully at the terrain before you found a city: You need some food and some production (unless you wnat to buy everything), some science/money. You can site a city to be very rich in one of these, but you need at least a little of all of them. Also don't site cities too close to each other, once you have a courthouse you will be able to utilise squares 2 away, so don't site cities any closer thn 4 squares.
Decide early on the end game you want, ideally before you start the game - this will help choose the civilisation you want to play as.
For a military victory this is my rough plan. Early on get as many cities as possible, spread them out sparsely. As soon as you run out of land to expand into (you come across a neighbour in every direction), stop and build more cities in the bits you have missed until you they are as close as economical (4 squares). Identify which cities are your production cities and which are your money cities and skew their resources appropriately. Wherever you have the chance put the effort into food so that your city will grow, then swap effort to production/money as needed. Pour your research effort into military technology, if you don't have the most advanced military units available then you are very unlikely to win the game this way. If you are the first to get catapult/canon for example then that is the cue to go on a concurring spree. Build roads from your production cities to your cities nearest your neighbour you are preparing to attack. First make sure your base of attack city is well defended (remember which units at which technology level are best at defence and attack) then send them out with a defence force too. Once you have the initiative, press it. I often find that the computer will anticipate my above moves and prepare the nearest city for such an attack, so I will where the map allows have an initial attack on the city it expects me to attack, then in a few turns change my attack to another nearby city where there are probably less defence forces and therefore quickly capture that one. This blitz style method worked for Hitler and it can work for you too. Once you have the hang of this technique the military victory all comes down to perfecting the flow of resources and troops. Pay attention when you capture a city what it is good at and what it needs and build it up appropriatly. Always try and stay at least equal with technology and if you can get ahead and go on a spree. Once you get sufficiently large you can have two attack forces which can (if you do a thrust with one force, then with another) be very effective at catching the computer off guard.
So I would start with a military victory as that gives you the basics of resource management that you need for all the victories.
Technology Victory. Similar to the military one, but your emphasis is very much on the tech. You will at times find yourself well ahead of your neighbours in technology and therefore during these times I press my advantage and take their cities as is convenient. Also this is a stratogy to go seafaring and have bases on multiple continents. Go exploring with settlers early and have a base on each major continent and you'll be surprised how easy you can overrun your neighbours. If doing this though beware of being overrun by other's culture - you'll need to build temples/cathedrals and city walls in your seed city unless you go concurring. Watch carefully which cities are producing lots of science and equip them with libraries and universities.
Culture Victory.
A good victory to go for if you find yourself with a few very strong cities close together. Especially if this is on a large continent shared with many other civilisations. You'll eventually absorb your neighbouring cities. One tirck I found is if you're feeling a bit militant and you notice your nearest neighbour's city is on the verge of converting then go and concur the city beyond the one that is about to convert and you'll get two cities for one.
Governments:
Democracy - great if you're on a build phase where you're trying to strengthen your existing cities and don't care about going concurring. Equally good if you're falling behind others materially, but are more advanced technologically and need them to declare war on you(because you can't declare war on them as a democracy). An absolute must for culture or economic victory. I tend to use this if I'm not feeling very aggressive, often then I'll end up being ahead in one area which will mean someone declares war on me. At that point you can usually use your advantage to get at least two cities of theirs before they offer peace. Then throw your resources into getting those new cities up to spec and repeat the process.
Communism - Good for growing the number of cities as settlers are very cheap. Not bad for military either
Republic - a good one for a concurring phase as you can declare war and are reasonably productive
If I can think of any more things to do I'll add them later...
When I first started writing this blog I made the decision that yes it would be a bit random, and certainly not cutting edge, but the audience had to be wide; particularly for computer games it had to appeal to people like myself (Who have been playing computer games all be it intermittently almost all their lives - since the BBC back in 1982 when I was 4), to my partner (who frequently expresses how much she hates computer games and is on a mission to discourage me from playing them), right through to my flatmate (who works for a games company).
So a review of civilisation is tricky as if my memory serves me correctly I had a copy of back in the days of the Atari ST, if not then we certainly had it on at least one of our Amigas. This is a game therefore that spans nearly 2/3rds of my life and yet the question still needs answering why am I still so addicted to it? Why do i still find myself going on there with the intention of playing it for half an hour or so and still be there at 3am unable to leave the computer?
From that you can guess that the new version is just as addictive as the earlier versions and in my eyes the remake has lived up to the old ones in terms of playability. More importantly for me it is very playable on the XBOX and also (my flatmate informs me) on the DS.
So if you are familiar with Civ, then you can stop reading here, yes it is as addictive as the earlier versions, yes the interface does work on a console, yes that sim speak the avatars use is bloody annoying, but you can turn the volume off for that at least, and no it doesn't really add much to the previous versions of Civ except possibly a balancing of all the modes of combat and some pretty animations if that's your thing. If you enjoyed civ in the past and want a solution for your surrent games platform of choice then civilisation revolutions should leave you at the very least sleepless, even if you disagree with some of the fine tuning changes they've made.
For newcomers then, what is Civ?
Well a turn based strategy game where the aim is to become the dominant civilisation on your map. This can be achieved in a number of ways:
Military
Simply wipe out enough of your competitors that everyone else is crushed beneath your mighty war machine. IME this is one of the easiest ways to win the game, and often the most fun, still where's the challenge in easy.
Culture:
An interesting concept introduced in the new game (to me) is culture. Each city produces culture and you can do things like build temples and cathedrals and wonders (such as the hollywood wonder) to enhance your culture. If you are cultured enough neighbouring cities will want to join your culture. This is an interesting feature of the game as on my first time playing as a military domination I lost 3 of my major cities to my neighbour because i was pouring all my resources into building fighting units and the citizens of my industrial cities thought "bugger this, we'll join an interesting civilisation" and left me. Sure I swiftly concoured them back again, but that was enough of an experience to mean that the next game I played to win a culture victory which added a very interesting spin to the game with a significantly different set of objectives. i.e. every other method of winning requires a large number of cities, with culture you can win with a powerbase of just 3 cities (provided you supe them up enough)
Economic
Easy, get the most money, build the world bank, control the world. (You think that's your sword you're waving at me? You still owe me money for that :-)
Scientific
As part of civilisation you research new technologies, get to the stage of building a spaceship the soonest, and get it to Alpha Centuri before your capital is taken, then you win the game.
So lots of strategy, a multitude of tactics. Certainly not hot paced blowing aliens up stuff, but IMO far more entertaining. (BTW don't get me wrong, i still love those types of games, just see my gears of war review, it's just a case of different things for different moods).
So what else? If you're not convinced by now you never will be, so I thought I'd share some of my tactics I use while playing the game, I'm not saying these are perfect, but it may save you some time in figuring these out for yourself:
At the start of the game, siting your first city asap is vital, unless you start at a totally rubbish place, I would accept the square you land on just so that you can get producing things as soon as possible.
Attack those barbarians - they're always an easy kill.
Send your first military unit out exploring, use your second or 3rd to guard the city.
Once you have a couple of militia exploring and a guard on your first city, found a second and third city asap.
From this point on always make sure you have at least one guard unit in each city. Later in the game you'll need more then one. Three units of the same kind can be combined into an army. An army can normally defend itself against an attack by any unit of the same technology level. If you need to withstand a determined attack, (multiple units) or attack from a more advanced foe, invest in city walls. These sort of things though you don't need to worry about until later in the game.
Look very carefully at the terrain before you found a city: You need some food and some production (unless you wnat to buy everything), some science/money. You can site a city to be very rich in one of these, but you need at least a little of all of them. Also don't site cities too close to each other, once you have a courthouse you will be able to utilise squares 2 away, so don't site cities any closer thn 4 squares.
Decide early on the end game you want, ideally before you start the game - this will help choose the civilisation you want to play as.
For a military victory this is my rough plan. Early on get as many cities as possible, spread them out sparsely. As soon as you run out of land to expand into (you come across a neighbour in every direction), stop and build more cities in the bits you have missed until you they are as close as economical (4 squares). Identify which cities are your production cities and which are your money cities and skew their resources appropriately. Wherever you have the chance put the effort into food so that your city will grow, then swap effort to production/money as needed. Pour your research effort into military technology, if you don't have the most advanced military units available then you are very unlikely to win the game this way. If you are the first to get catapult/canon for example then that is the cue to go on a concurring spree. Build roads from your production cities to your cities nearest your neighbour you are preparing to attack. First make sure your base of attack city is well defended (remember which units at which technology level are best at defence and attack) then send them out with a defence force too. Once you have the initiative, press it. I often find that the computer will anticipate my above moves and prepare the nearest city for such an attack, so I will where the map allows have an initial attack on the city it expects me to attack, then in a few turns change my attack to another nearby city where there are probably less defence forces and therefore quickly capture that one. This blitz style method worked for Hitler and it can work for you too. Once you have the hang of this technique the military victory all comes down to perfecting the flow of resources and troops. Pay attention when you capture a city what it is good at and what it needs and build it up appropriatly. Always try and stay at least equal with technology and if you can get ahead and go on a spree. Once you get sufficiently large you can have two attack forces which can (if you do a thrust with one force, then with another) be very effective at catching the computer off guard.
So I would start with a military victory as that gives you the basics of resource management that you need for all the victories.
Technology Victory. Similar to the military one, but your emphasis is very much on the tech. You will at times find yourself well ahead of your neighbours in technology and therefore during these times I press my advantage and take their cities as is convenient. Also this is a stratogy to go seafaring and have bases on multiple continents. Go exploring with settlers early and have a base on each major continent and you'll be surprised how easy you can overrun your neighbours. If doing this though beware of being overrun by other's culture - you'll need to build temples/cathedrals and city walls in your seed city unless you go concurring. Watch carefully which cities are producing lots of science and equip them with libraries and universities.
Culture Victory.
A good victory to go for if you find yourself with a few very strong cities close together. Especially if this is on a large continent shared with many other civilisations. You'll eventually absorb your neighbouring cities. One tirck I found is if you're feeling a bit militant and you notice your nearest neighbour's city is on the verge of converting then go and concur the city beyond the one that is about to convert and you'll get two cities for one.
Governments:
Democracy - great if you're on a build phase where you're trying to strengthen your existing cities and don't care about going concurring. Equally good if you're falling behind others materially, but are more advanced technologically and need them to declare war on you(because you can't declare war on them as a democracy). An absolute must for culture or economic victory. I tend to use this if I'm not feeling very aggressive, often then I'll end up being ahead in one area which will mean someone declares war on me. At that point you can usually use your advantage to get at least two cities of theirs before they offer peace. Then throw your resources into getting those new cities up to spec and repeat the process.
Communism - Good for growing the number of cities as settlers are very cheap. Not bad for military either
Republic - a good one for a concurring phase as you can declare war and are reasonably productive
If I can think of any more things to do I'll add them later...
Monday 17 November 2008
Witches Of Eastwick - In Ipswich
This weekend we went to see the Witches of Eastwick production in Ipswich. Quick summary, I enjoyed it, but there were so many ways it could have been better.
Let's start with some background and disclaimers on my part:
My first exposure to Witches was to crew the show for The Festival Players in Cambridge.
My second exposure was that when I liked the show so much I got the soundtrack from Amazon (the west end version was all they had). This compared poorly to the Festival Players version as although without a doubt the quality of the singing was better, it had far less soul and wasn't half as much fun to listen to. Also they didn't have on it one of the best songs of the show: "The Glory Of Me" instead they had "Who's the Man"; this is fine though as that reflected the original run of things, not the re-worked one.
And so now we get on to Saturday's performance, I was almost giddy with anticipation, the first time actually seeing one of my favourite shows (when you're running the fly tower for a show you may not be able to actually watch it, but you can still enjoy it). So lets first get onto the stuff that was good about the show and make the inevitable comparison to the production that I was involved with:
Edit:
So after reading some online reviews in a few different places, this has brought me to a simple set of conclusions: Either they saw a different show, we are looking for different things/find different things entertaining, or all critics are idiots - which I'm sure they'd agree counted for me.
Thinking about it more the show was about Witches - it needed the Magic; which they cut out all of it. It needed great music and dialogue, a lot of which they cut out for new music (which might yet grow on me and is subjective so I'll save judgement). It needed charisma from Daryl most importantly he needed to be believable that he could seduce those women and I'm sorry that even if i had been a teenage girl with a crush on Marty, his idiotic gyrations and pissing about on stage would have instantly turned me off. As a 30 something man who always was suspicious of him anyway it was a sure fire way to blame him for the failure of the shows in my eyes, and the eyes of everyone who saw it.
Let's start with some background and disclaimers on my part:
My first exposure to Witches was to crew the show for The Festival Players in Cambridge.
My second exposure was that when I liked the show so much I got the soundtrack from Amazon (the west end version was all they had). This compared poorly to the Festival Players version as although without a doubt the quality of the singing was better, it had far less soul and wasn't half as much fun to listen to. Also they didn't have on it one of the best songs of the show: "The Glory Of Me" instead they had "Who's the Man"; this is fine though as that reflected the original run of things, not the re-worked one.
And so now we get on to Saturday's performance, I was almost giddy with anticipation, the first time actually seeing one of my favourite shows (when you're running the fly tower for a show you may not be able to actually watch it, but you can still enjoy it). So lets first get onto the stuff that was good about the show and make the inevitable comparison to the production that I was involved with:
- The singing was better than either production(including the west end version). For once when the witches sang "Perfectly in Tune" they actually were. And as for a Darryl who could actually sing - well that was a wonderful change from the west end version.
- The set was produced to the high standard you would expect from a professional touring show
- The wealth of new songs might not have been what I was expecting, but they brought fresh light onto a show I thought I new very well.
- Marti Pellow was being a ham. The fact that the audience applauded him simply for walking on stage was a very bad start, but the fact that he carried on acting like a spoilt attention seeking child throughout the show almost ruined it for me, was it not for his stunning rendition of some of the songs I could never have forgiven him for his shoddy and unconvincing performance. I was not the only one who totally lost belief that Darryl as played here was capable of seducing these women. For those who didn't see it, he frequently rubbed various body parts in a very exaggerated manner that was as idiotic and unconvincing as it was inappropriate. This man has clearly read all the worst bits of Michael Green.
- The tech was very very limited. No arrival of Darryl through a trap door, no flying witches, only a few seconds of the self playing cello (and that was pretty pathetic), no pretty much anything; they even cut the exploding tennis ball and the frying pan kill. If an amateur group can do these things on our budget, for a single show run then that's the least I'd expect from a professional company doing multiple show runs.
- The lighting design was very basic - I have done better myself in Edinburgh in a 2 hour get in; and I am no lighting designer, just an enthusiastic amateur.
- The three witches never really gelled as a trio, individually their performances were the best I have seen/heard, however they didn't convince as a whole.
Edit:
So after reading some online reviews in a few different places, this has brought me to a simple set of conclusions: Either they saw a different show, we are looking for different things/find different things entertaining, or all critics are idiots - which I'm sure they'd agree counted for me.
Thinking about it more the show was about Witches - it needed the Magic; which they cut out all of it. It needed great music and dialogue, a lot of which they cut out for new music (which might yet grow on me and is subjective so I'll save judgement). It needed charisma from Daryl most importantly he needed to be believable that he could seduce those women and I'm sorry that even if i had been a teenage girl with a crush on Marty, his idiotic gyrations and pissing about on stage would have instantly turned me off. As a 30 something man who always was suspicious of him anyway it was a sure fire way to blame him for the failure of the shows in my eyes, and the eyes of everyone who saw it.
Friday 7 November 2008
Gears Of War 2 Review
First impressions:
- Lots of cutscenes - about half the game play time feels like I'm watching cutscenes
- To add to that, it seems like someone in the first one complained that there wasn't much story, so they've tried to make up for that and then some.
- They have kept the duck and cover mechanic that was so much fun in the first - this is a good thing
- There are a few annoying parts where you need to shoot a moving target - very easy with a mouse, (How I anticipate the game was designed) not so easy on the XBOX 360 gamepad that I'm using.
- I'm first playing on the normal difficulty level and there seems to be an aweful lot of level and scare monsters. I'm looking forward to re-playing it on a harder level.
- The AIs for your companions is the best i have come across in any game - they are actually willing to push ahead without you having to force them forwards
- Ammo is (on this difficulty level) plentyful.
- They've (mostly) avoided the current trend in current generation FPSs of making everything 20,000 different shades of grey + blood. There are blues and yellows and everything. This is a very good thing - I can see the georgous game that I'm playing.
- The actual combat itself is fun! Contrast this to Prey.
- No more bezerkers (yet). I hated these levels in the first game - the first one was fun/new/challenging; by the 3rd time I was bored and fed up. So far they've avoided this and that's for the best. In a game that's supposed to be a fast paced shooter, sneeking around and stealth are a welcome occasional change of game mechanic, but still not what I bought the game for - stick to what you bought the game for.
- So far no vehicle section - again this is good. If i wanted to play a driving game I'd break out the steering wheel and play PGR 4 - unless they wanted to support using the steering wheel as a method of controlling the combat vehicle - then that would be cool! (for the first time anyway).
- They have a habit of doing: checkpoint, really boring easy section, section that requires you to learn new skill/figure out puzzle. So having a difficult bit after a boring bit means you have to play the same boring bit several times - which grates!
Monday 3 November 2008
Webcomics
So I thought a repository of the comics I like or dislike and why. This will be an ongoing post as I'm always discovering new things; however as i discover new ones they'll probably get their own post as appropriate.
Where appropriate I'll link to the first comic in the series that I find funny/worthwhile reading. This is important for some comics as some don't get going for a while (xkcd in particular). I've broken down the comics into rough categories, obviously many of them cross multiple categories so I won't obsess over which should be in which.
Geeky Comics
So since I've started with xkcd lets put that one first. Very sciency and geeky and a big fan of using the alt text in order to convey a further joke. If you have the slightest bit of geek in you, you should read this.
In a similar vein is Irregular Webcomic. This again uses geeky humour and science as regular plot points but goes into great depth with some explanations sometimes in more detail than you could imagine. there are a number of set themes that he uses and probably the best archive system of anything out there on the net.
And whilst we're in the geeky vein how could I not mention Nukees. One of the oldest comics on the web and certainly some of the weirdest humour/plots I have know. Still it's good fun.
Of course there is also GPF. Although it is beginning to show its age a bit...
Space Comics
Ones that have space travel as their main theme, it seems to be quite a common theme.
The utterly classic freefall. Still running after over a decade, still scientifically accurate and still yet to have anything resembling significant plot action occur. Ok that's a bit too harsh, but I nominate this webcomic for the award of "Slowest plot development ever".
Ever wanted a spoof of Battlestar galactica, star trek, star trek, heroes and goodness knows what else in one place? Well either way there's Legostar Galactica.
Finally there's outrim. Placed last for 2 reasons: First I've only just started reading it, and second because it strongly overlaps with the next category. Another comic that tries to get bits of it's science accurate and where it is inaccurate it is at least sufficiently implausible that it just might happen.
Animal Comics
A massive theme seems to be one a world of intelligent animals in place of humans.
The origin of this genre must be found close to Kevin and Kell. From which I am sure many others have taken a lead. There's also Sherman's Lagoon, Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy that I recommend.
Story Comics
Most webcomics have a story, but these I class here as being story first and comic second.
This is the only place i can put Sam and Fuzzy. It's a weird comic, but it has its moment. The NDA enforcing robot being one of my favourites. What can I say? I liked it so much I bought the T-Shirt, not to mention the explicit cowbell...
Then there is afterlife blues created by the same people who did the epic Miracle of Science. Afterlife has yet to get going, but if MOS is anything to go by, we are in for a real treat.
Mad Scientist
Mad science seems to be a staple of webcomics, so here are a few of the main ones in my life:
Miracle of science I previously mentioned in the story section, but happily fits here.
The definition of this genre would be the excellent Casey and Andy. Unfortunately finished now, but the author has other projects so we can hope...
Of course considering all this mad science where would life be without some radioactive panda - smaller and infused with atomic energy. A cast complete with mad scientists, zombies, mad robots, werewolves and runaway genetic experiments.
For somewhere in between surreal and out of this world you can't go wrong with a bit of Bob the angry flower.
Gaming
Ever played D&D? Well, I love this concept; imagine a world where Tolken never existed and the story of lord of the rings came about only as part of a D&D adventure. After this the same people who did irregular webcomic went and did this superb parody of Star wars EP1.
now I have mixed feelings about Ctrl alt delete. At times it is very funny. At other times it is as far removed from humour as i can imagine. I won't dissect it, others have done so far better, especially the unstoppable Yahtzee. Suffice to say I think it's worth the read.
However one gaming comic I cannot find funny no matter how hard I try is penny arcade. I just don't get their references and even my flatmate going out of his way to point me at the best of the strips (in his opinion) didn't give me strips I found funny. Never mind, each to their own.
Unclassified
Not sure where these fit in the grand scheme of thing.
I always look to Wellington Grey for some insightful commentary on modern society.
Not sure how the tales of baby dragons fits into the grand scheme of high art, but dragontails is a joy to read to a gaming geek or fans of certain mangas.
Of course life from the perspective of a serial killer has its ups and downs. And for a usually subtle, often blatantly disturbing look on life, there's a softer world.
If slightly sick humour is your thing, have a look at Edible Dirt. In a similar vein is the Perry Bible Fellowship.
And finally in an example of how things should be done, Garfield how it should have been! Yep that's it, the best thing to happen to Garfield is to remove him from the strip.
Where appropriate I'll link to the first comic in the series that I find funny/worthwhile reading. This is important for some comics as some don't get going for a while (xkcd in particular). I've broken down the comics into rough categories, obviously many of them cross multiple categories so I won't obsess over which should be in which.
Geeky Comics
So since I've started with xkcd lets put that one first. Very sciency and geeky and a big fan of using the alt text in order to convey a further joke. If you have the slightest bit of geek in you, you should read this.
In a similar vein is Irregular Webcomic. This again uses geeky humour and science as regular plot points but goes into great depth with some explanations sometimes in more detail than you could imagine. there are a number of set themes that he uses and probably the best archive system of anything out there on the net.
And whilst we're in the geeky vein how could I not mention Nukees. One of the oldest comics on the web and certainly some of the weirdest humour/plots I have know. Still it's good fun.
Of course there is also GPF. Although it is beginning to show its age a bit...
Space Comics
Ones that have space travel as their main theme, it seems to be quite a common theme.
The utterly classic freefall. Still running after over a decade, still scientifically accurate and still yet to have anything resembling significant plot action occur. Ok that's a bit too harsh, but I nominate this webcomic for the award of "Slowest plot development ever".
Ever wanted a spoof of Battlestar galactica, star trek, star trek, heroes and goodness knows what else in one place? Well either way there's Legostar Galactica.
Finally there's outrim. Placed last for 2 reasons: First I've only just started reading it, and second because it strongly overlaps with the next category. Another comic that tries to get bits of it's science accurate and where it is inaccurate it is at least sufficiently implausible that it just might happen.
Animal Comics
A massive theme seems to be one a world of intelligent animals in place of humans.
The origin of this genre must be found close to Kevin and Kell. From which I am sure many others have taken a lead. There's also Sherman's Lagoon, Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy that I recommend.
Story Comics
Most webcomics have a story, but these I class here as being story first and comic second.
This is the only place i can put Sam and Fuzzy. It's a weird comic, but it has its moment. The NDA enforcing robot being one of my favourites. What can I say? I liked it so much I bought the T-Shirt, not to mention the explicit cowbell...
Then there is afterlife blues created by the same people who did the epic Miracle of Science. Afterlife has yet to get going, but if MOS is anything to go by, we are in for a real treat.
Mad Scientist
Mad science seems to be a staple of webcomics, so here are a few of the main ones in my life:
Miracle of science I previously mentioned in the story section, but happily fits here.
The definition of this genre would be the excellent Casey and Andy. Unfortunately finished now, but the author has other projects so we can hope...
Of course considering all this mad science where would life be without some radioactive panda - smaller and infused with atomic energy. A cast complete with mad scientists, zombies, mad robots, werewolves and runaway genetic experiments.
For somewhere in between surreal and out of this world you can't go wrong with a bit of Bob the angry flower.
Gaming
Ever played D&D? Well, I love this concept; imagine a world where Tolken never existed and the story of lord of the rings came about only as part of a D&D adventure. After this the same people who did irregular webcomic went and did this superb parody of Star wars EP1.
now I have mixed feelings about Ctrl alt delete. At times it is very funny. At other times it is as far removed from humour as i can imagine. I won't dissect it, others have done so far better, especially the unstoppable Yahtzee. Suffice to say I think it's worth the read.
However one gaming comic I cannot find funny no matter how hard I try is penny arcade. I just don't get their references and even my flatmate going out of his way to point me at the best of the strips (in his opinion) didn't give me strips I found funny. Never mind, each to their own.
Unclassified
Not sure where these fit in the grand scheme of thing.
I always look to Wellington Grey for some insightful commentary on modern society.
Not sure how the tales of baby dragons fits into the grand scheme of high art, but dragontails is a joy to read to a gaming geek or fans of certain mangas.
Of course life from the perspective of a serial killer has its ups and downs. And for a usually subtle, often blatantly disturbing look on life, there's a softer world.
If slightly sick humour is your thing, have a look at Edible Dirt. In a similar vein is the Perry Bible Fellowship.
And finally in an example of how things should be done, Garfield how it should have been! Yep that's it, the best thing to happen to Garfield is to remove him from the strip.
Little Shop of Horrors Thoughts
I've recently been involved in a production of Little Shop of Horrors. This is one of my favourite musicals and thought I should state a few things about it that have been going through my brain.
My first encounter with this musical was through my brother at a very young age, at the same time as he introduced me to the Rocky Horror Show soundtrack he introduced me to LSOH. I remember at the time being very taken with the fact that it had a song in it that used the word shit. I'd never heard swearing in music before and this was a very big and cool thing as far as I was concerned.
Over the years I then got to see the film itself and then finally a few productions of it.
Imagine now this is an analysis of the show for some sort of English essay...
The plant is telepathic and can perform telesuggestion:
There is ample evidence in the script that the plant has the ability to influence the events around it with telepathic means. notice how the first woman who buys $100 worth of roses arrives perfectly as needed and responds perfectly to get the maximum possible effect. The plant clearly can influence people's thinking.
Now one theory I've had for a while is that the reason the plant needs blood is that it gains language skills and access to the human condition from its consumption of blood. Some could argue that it could get it's language skills simply by listening in and learning as a child would. I don't buy this as it learns language far faster than a human child would; and without ever making any mistakes. But learning from blood makes no sense, there is know information in blood about language, so the only explanation for the plant's language skills is again telepathy. From this we can be secure that the plant is able to both read minds and influence them; at quite some distance too.
Moving back to the consumption of blood, the plant gains sustenance from blood purely as an animal or a flytrap would. If this is true, why insist on human blood? This is an alien plant after all so it must be able to process any type of blood, it simply prefers to go after the blood of the dominant species of whatever planet it visits. Again though this makes no sense, if you were an alien species bent on world conquest your first imperative would be to multiply your numbers, once you were secure in your numbers only then would you go onto attack the dominant species. Clearly world conquest is not its highest concern. It must gain its blood from the highest status species. The plant either has some religious or moral objection to gaining power through eating lower animals, it must gain power from those who it is most at risk from. This to me is actually a very sporting attitude and one you seldom see in nature.
It has been in my mind for sometime, but a comment in the show's program really drove it home to me. Seymore is a classic doomed figure. His fall was not only inevitable it was all for the love of a woman and such blind desire proved to be the downfall of both of them. At each step Seymore is doing his best for his love and is still tormented by his every decision. He is a moral character and never actually kills anyone himself, yet is tormented by the accidental deaths that surround his actions. This is not surprising yet it is still tragic how his story finishes.
The plant is virtually indestructible. This is made abundantly clear in the end as Seymore tries to kill it with poisons, a gun and a machete. With the story as it ends, what hope does humanity have?
Well lots actually. Rat poison doesn't really have much effect on terrestrial vegetation so we'd expect the same on extraterrestrial vegetation. Maybe he should have tried some herbicide.
The bullets are likewise unsurprisingly ineffective. Try shooting a tree with a revolver and see how easily you kill it. As for the machete, again take a few swings at the average tree and see where it gets you. Yes you'll hack bits off, but the tree itself carries on. Hell on some plants you'd actually help it, after all Seymore himself sings "I've cut you back hard like I'm s'posed to" and laments how this doesn't help the plant be healthy.
So no the plant is almost certainly far from indestructable - he just used totally the wrong methods. He's started to think of the plant as an animal and that is his failure in killing it. You'd expect better from someone who was supposed to know his plants.
My first encounter with this musical was through my brother at a very young age, at the same time as he introduced me to the Rocky Horror Show soundtrack he introduced me to LSOH. I remember at the time being very taken with the fact that it had a song in it that used the word shit. I'd never heard swearing in music before and this was a very big and cool thing as far as I was concerned.
Over the years I then got to see the film itself and then finally a few productions of it.
Imagine now this is an analysis of the show for some sort of English essay...
The plant is telepathic and can perform telesuggestion:
There is ample evidence in the script that the plant has the ability to influence the events around it with telepathic means. notice how the first woman who buys $100 worth of roses arrives perfectly as needed and responds perfectly to get the maximum possible effect. The plant clearly can influence people's thinking.
Now one theory I've had for a while is that the reason the plant needs blood is that it gains language skills and access to the human condition from its consumption of blood. Some could argue that it could get it's language skills simply by listening in and learning as a child would. I don't buy this as it learns language far faster than a human child would; and without ever making any mistakes. But learning from blood makes no sense, there is know information in blood about language, so the only explanation for the plant's language skills is again telepathy. From this we can be secure that the plant is able to both read minds and influence them; at quite some distance too.
Moving back to the consumption of blood, the plant gains sustenance from blood purely as an animal or a flytrap would. If this is true, why insist on human blood? This is an alien plant after all so it must be able to process any type of blood, it simply prefers to go after the blood of the dominant species of whatever planet it visits. Again though this makes no sense, if you were an alien species bent on world conquest your first imperative would be to multiply your numbers, once you were secure in your numbers only then would you go onto attack the dominant species. Clearly world conquest is not its highest concern. It must gain its blood from the highest status species. The plant either has some religious or moral objection to gaining power through eating lower animals, it must gain power from those who it is most at risk from. This to me is actually a very sporting attitude and one you seldom see in nature.
It has been in my mind for sometime, but a comment in the show's program really drove it home to me. Seymore is a classic doomed figure. His fall was not only inevitable it was all for the love of a woman and such blind desire proved to be the downfall of both of them. At each step Seymore is doing his best for his love and is still tormented by his every decision. He is a moral character and never actually kills anyone himself, yet is tormented by the accidental deaths that surround his actions. This is not surprising yet it is still tragic how his story finishes.
The plant is virtually indestructible. This is made abundantly clear in the end as Seymore tries to kill it with poisons, a gun and a machete. With the story as it ends, what hope does humanity have?
Well lots actually. Rat poison doesn't really have much effect on terrestrial vegetation so we'd expect the same on extraterrestrial vegetation. Maybe he should have tried some herbicide.
The bullets are likewise unsurprisingly ineffective. Try shooting a tree with a revolver and see how easily you kill it. As for the machete, again take a few swings at the average tree and see where it gets you. Yes you'll hack bits off, but the tree itself carries on. Hell on some plants you'd actually help it, after all Seymore himself sings "I've cut you back hard like I'm s'posed to" and laments how this doesn't help the plant be healthy.
So no the plant is almost certainly far from indestructable - he just used totally the wrong methods. He's started to think of the plant as an animal and that is his failure in killing it. You'd expect better from someone who was supposed to know his plants.
Conversation Techniques
You know I haven't always been the happy together and all round froody guy I currently am. Why I once had to resort to sarcasm for humour. There used to be a time when I was absolutely rubbish at conversation, and while I'm no expert or Casanova now I thought I would put down some of the things I learned/came up with years ago to try and help.
The first thing i did was to spend time looking and listening to the people who were popular/successful and try and work out what they did that I should emulate. Likewise look at others and try and work out what to avoid. This more than anything has been my guiding light. Oh, that and considering what kind of person I wanted to be.
The main lesson: It's all about the other person in the conversation. No-one likes someone who comes into a conversation with a "hey everyone, let's all talk about me" attitude. The key to doing this is most of all to listen to the other person and try and guess what they want to talk about. If you must talk about yourself, then try and only do so as an empathising technique.
That of course wasn't enough so I tried to plan in advance conversations to have with people if I needed to come up with something to stimulate the conversation. Think about the group you will be with in advance and if all else fails have some generic subjects to fall back on. Yes the traditional English ones of the weather and complaining about the latest Tax, Police event or even other pointless news story is always a good fallback.
Finally if all else fails, listen to them; most people when given someone who is paying them full attention and asking for more will try and fill the gap.
The result? Well it works for me, so much so that it has changed significantly who I am. YMMV.
The first thing i did was to spend time looking and listening to the people who were popular/successful and try and work out what they did that I should emulate. Likewise look at others and try and work out what to avoid. This more than anything has been my guiding light. Oh, that and considering what kind of person I wanted to be.
The main lesson: It's all about the other person in the conversation. No-one likes someone who comes into a conversation with a "hey everyone, let's all talk about me" attitude. The key to doing this is most of all to listen to the other person and try and guess what they want to talk about. If you must talk about yourself, then try and only do so as an empathising technique.
That of course wasn't enough so I tried to plan in advance conversations to have with people if I needed to come up with something to stimulate the conversation. Think about the group you will be with in advance and if all else fails have some generic subjects to fall back on. Yes the traditional English ones of the weather and complaining about the latest Tax, Police event or even other pointless news story is always a good fallback.
Finally if all else fails, listen to them; most people when given someone who is paying them full attention and asking for more will try and fill the gap.
The result? Well it works for me, so much so that it has changed significantly who I am. YMMV.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)